Ohio Education Association Imposes Dues Hike to Defeat Collective Bargaining Reform

In many states, teachers and other public sector employees have no choice but to pay a union in order to have their job. While they don’t have to be a member per se, they still have to pay a fee for the union to bargain on their behalf.

They’re captives of a system that is stacked in favor of special interest groups, like the Ohio Education Association.

OEA officials will do everything in their power to regain the collective bargaining privileges they exploited for decades at the expense of taxpayers and the state. Part of their strategy is to unilaterally assess active members $54 (support staff $25) to generate $5 million for a referendum campaign, regardless of individual teachers’ political beliefs or their position on collective bargaining.

OEA officials told the Dispatch that the decision was made by “an overwhelming majority” of an estimated 1,000 delegates who attended the union’s Spring Representative Assembly, but they refused to disclose the vote. So the public will just have to take their word for it.

It’s the same dirty pool in Michigan, where Michigan Education Association executives recently conducted a statewide membership vote to gauge support for “job actions,” including a possible strike, to protest pending education reforms. But MEA officials refuse to release the vote totals to the public or their members. If they go out on strike, who can say if the teachers really voted in favor of the action?

In both cases union bosses give the appearance of democracy by polling members. But without reliable vote totals as proof, the public is left to wonder if the union is really motivated by the will of rank-and-file members, or the decisions of a small group of left-wing bosses who are immune from everyday financial realities.

A growing number of Ohio residents are realizing that the state, and local school districts in particular, can no longer afford many of the expensive perks contained in union collective bargaining agreements. More and more citizens understand that it doesn’t make sense to lay off young and eager educators, or cancel student programs, to preserve bonuses for retiring teachers or full salaries for local union presidents who never teach.

Ohio’s collective bargaining reforms will allow school officials to prioritize spending with a focus on students rather than employees. The new laws put Ohio taxpayers back in control of public schools by limiting the union’s toxic influence at the collective bargaining table. We have to believe there are some Ohio educators who support these common-sense changes. But we’ll never know how many, because the OEA won’t tell us.

If OEA officials are convinced that an overwhelming majority of teachers support their efforts to repeal collective bargaining reforms, then why don’t they allow educators to voluntarily donate to the cause? Instead, the union is extracting the funds involuntarily from many teachers who wish not to participate.